Portland Press Herald - Although
Maine is poised to become the first in the nation to use ranked-choice
voting in statewide races Tuesday, Portland has used the voting method
twice already to choose a mayor.
Those involved in both elections
agreed that knowing voters would be ranking their candidates forced
them to reach out to more voters and think twice about going negative,
because it was important to appeal to an opponent’s supporters, whose
backing would be needed in an instant runoff.
“We dramatically
expanded the universe of people we reached out to and I think that’s a
good thing in terms of campaigns,” said Michael Brennan, who in 2011
became Portland’s first popularly elected mayor in nearly 90 years
through ranked-choice voting.
.... After Portland’s first
ranked-choice election in 2011, FairVote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group
that supports ranked-choice voting, conducted a survey of 122 voters.
It found that 94 percent of those people fully understood ranked-choice
voting and 66 percent said ranking the candidates was easy or very easy.
However,
52 percent ranked between two and five candidates in the 15-way race.
And about 12 percent voted for only one person, which is referred to as
bullet voting.
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